Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Isaac Hayes, who voices Chef on “South Park,” wants out of his contract because the show has allegedly gone overboard in ridiculing religion. Of course, this complaint only surfaced after his religion, Scientology, went under the knife. In their reply to Hayes, SP’s creators onceagain warm the cockles of my heart by refusing to pull punches:

“This has nothing to do with intolerance and bigotry and everything to do with the fact that Isaac Hayes is a Scientologist and that we recently featured Scientology in an episode of ‘South Park,’” responded Matt Stone, co-creator of “South Park,” in a statement. “In 10 years and over 150 episodes of ‘South Park,’ Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews. He got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion featured on the show. To bring the civil rights struggle into this is just a non sequitur. Of course we will release Isaac from his contract and we wish him well.”